In the past two millennia, the world has seen a marked cultural shift in the use of daylight in buildings, away from the magic symbolism of earlier ages. In contemporary masterpieces of architecture, the light of the sun and sky is used as a means of connecting communities, establishing a sense of place and time and drawing people’s attention to the beauty of nature. Occasionally, light even serves to quietly subvert traditional notions of power and divinity. This is exemplified in two great buildings that, despite being located on opposite sides of the globe, share many common features: Jørn Utzon’s Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen, and Glenn Murcutt’s Australian Islamic Centre in Melbourne.

In all the projects shown in this issue, the built form was key to the daylighting concept – from the Pantheon’s oculus to the golden triangular skylights of the Australian Islamic Centre. Discover the hidden geometries and proportions of the buildings as you browse through the magazine!

“The temple was conceived as a sundial, where the sky of alternating dark and blue is revealed through a great oculus in the cupola. Through this opening, a ray of sunlight makes its round of the coffered ceiling and walls of porphyry, granite and yellow marbles, coming to rest on the carefully polished pavement like a shield of gold” ,as described by Marguerite Yourcenar in her Memoirs of Hadrian.

Geometrical analysis of Bagsværd Church. Jørn Utzon cleverly combined a regular grid of columns and beams with softly-curving concrete ceilings based on circles with different diameters.

“You have shown how to turn motion into form, matter into luminance, and gravety into flight...
Your poetic alchemy enriches the imagination of all of us.”

Juhani Pallasmaa about Jørn Utzon

It is remarkable how architecture can transform our appreciation of daylight, a natural phenomenon that, on a daily basis, we take for granted. Profound architectural experiences are created through the manipulation of daylight. As Le Corbusier so eloquently expressed, “Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light”.
In significant architecture, such as the Pantheon in Rome, the cosmic dimension of light is extenuated and experienced as being sublime. In its present form, as a circular building with a portico of Corinthian columns, it was rebuilt during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. Earlier temples on the site dating back to 27BC had previously been destroyed by fire. It was Hadrian’s intention that this sanctuary for all gods should represent both the “terrestrial globe” and “the stellar sphere.” The temple was conceived as a sundial, where the sky of alternating dark and blue is revealed through a great oculus in the cupola. Through this opening, a ray of sunlight makes its round of the coffered ceiling and walls of porphyry, granite and yellow marbles, coming to rest on the carefully polished pavement like “a shield of gold”, as described by Marguerite Yourcenar in her Memoirs of Hadrian. It is an architecture where notably the interior was clearly intended to outshine the exterior.
The Pantheon was also designed as a forum where the emperor could make public appearances and thus remind the gathered audience of his own divinity. In 609, all vestiges of pagan idolatry were removed by Pope Boniface IV and the building consecrated as a Christian church, Santa Maria ad Martyres. This continued use as a church has undoubtedly contributed to the Pantheon’s survival, saving it from the abandonment and eventual destruction that was the fate of so many of Rome’s other ancient buildings. This has allowed the building to remain a source of inspiration to architects, from Brunelleschi through to the present day. For Louis Kahn, the Pantheon was a particularly significant influence. It served to define a poetic understanding of silence and light that underpins his architecture. According to Kahn, “Inspiration is the feeling of beginning at the threshold where Silence and Light meet. Silence, the unmeasurable, desire to be, desire to express, the source of new need, meets Light, the measurable, giver of all presence”.1 Light is thus that which, by giving presence, brings a work of art or architecture into life, from the poetic idea into reality.
Kahn’s articulation of light in his design of public buildings often has a divine quality, akin to that of the Pantheon. Le Corbusier, on the other hand, as an avowed agnostic, went beyond the religious notions and symbolism of light as divinity in his sacred works of architecture, to a more sublime poetic experience of our place in the cosmos. As Henry Plummer writes of the transformative power of light in Le Corbusier’s architecture, “Instead of serving as a tool of religious persuasion, as it generally has in the past, light has become a quiet force to visually resist and elude, erode and outshine, the Church’s mandate. Light eats away and weakens institutional discipline, while exerting its own dazzling powers to draw attention out to the sky

“Never have I seen white light have so many nuances as in Bagsværd Church … The light enters everywhere so that you avoid the feeling of darkness, and also the feeling of conclusion. A clever interpretation of the concept of eternity.”

Henrik Sten Møller in Politiken, Søndagsmagasin 4.4.93

and its commonplace marvels – in effect using light to consecrate the natural universe”.2

In Different Light
To this pantheon of architects who are masters of light and whose sacred buildings go beyond religious tradition and dogma, one can add Jørn Utzon with his Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen, Denmark, and Glenn Murcutt with the just recently completed Newport Mosque near Melbourne, Australia. Both are outstanding examples of poetic notions of daylight as the creative driving force for spiritual works of architecture. In these buildings, the articulation of light is the essential idea underpinning the architectural expression and serves to bring the community together.
Despite being from opposite sides of the globe, Utzon and Murcutt have much in common as architects. In Bagsværd and Newport, however, they were operating not only within very contrasting cultural but also very differing natural environments, particularly in regard to the contrasting qualities of daylight. As Murcutt explained, in Australia the light is so sharp and intense that it visually separates all the elements in the landscape. It is therefore good for outdoor sports where one has to keep one’s eye on the ball, for example, but less conducive, he says, for contemplation, in contrast to the Northern European light, which is soft and muted, thus uniting elements.
Both Utzon and Murcutt have been greatly influenced by the Nordic master of humane modernism and sculpted skylights, Alvar Aalto, as can evidenced in their respective works, most notably in Bagsværd Church, with its sensually undulating light-reflecting ceilings and the skylights of Murcutt’s own home. Utzon and Murcutt’s acute understanding and appreciation for light have also been heightened by their close associations with artists, on occasions working together on the artist’s own projects. However, as Murcutt makes clear, a very different quality of light is required to make and display art than to create a space for spiritual contemplation.

Through drawing comes imagination and emotion
For both Utzon and Murcutt the act of drawing is the most direct means of connection with the imagination. Utzon initially presented two conceptual sketches to explain his intentions for the Bagsværd Church. One is an image of a gathering of people on a beach beneath rolling clouds, and the other is of a congregational procession towards a crucifix beneath cylindrical ceiling vaults. The sketches evoke a quintessentially Danish experience of an open, horizontal landscape beneath ever-present clouds that diffuse the light and occasionally part, allowing the sun to break through. However, the actual cloud formations that inspired Utzon in his sketch were the high vertical cumulus that he experienced at the beautiful Lanikai Beach, close to where his family were living at the time on Oahu, Hawaii. The experience of towering, cylindrical cloud formations that were formed every afternoon by the prevailing trade winds, Utzon likened to “a colonnade on its side”.3 The dramatic manner in which light penetrated between the clouds provided Utzon with a powerful conceptual design idea for the interior of the church hall. As Utzon him

The lateral wings
of Bagsværd Church display Jørn
Utzon’s lifelong fascination with
modular, additive architecture. A
system of modular skylights provides
the corridors inside the building
complex with natural daylight
from above.

​

self described, “I have architectonically attempted to realise the inspiration that I derived from the drifting clouds above the sea and the shore. Together, the clouds and the shore formed a wondrous space in which the light fell through the ceiling – the clouds – down on to the floor represented by the shore and the sea, and I had a strong feeling that this could be a place for a divine service.”4 Certainly this remarkable interior evokes a return to an almost pagan form of worship of natural phenomena. Explaining the quality of the light entering
the interior, Utzon says, “the light
in the church itself comes mainly from
the very large, highly positioned, westfacing
sidelight. It is reflected down the
whitewashed, curved surfaces of the
ceiling and provides a shadowless light
that decreases slightly lower down. The
room acquires a softness that produces
an elevated, optimistic feel”. As Henrik
Sten Møller, architecture correspondent
of the Danish national newspaper
Politiken, has commented, “Never have I
seen white light have so many nuances as
in Bagsværd Church”. He goes further to
explain that “the light enters everywhere
so that you avoid the feeling of darkness,
and also the feeling of conclusion. A
clever interpretation of the concept of
eternity.”5 With poetic phenomenological
understanding, Juhani Pallasmaa
has stated that Utzon has “shown how to
turn motion into form, matter into luminance,
and gravity into flight. I can touch
the chiaroscuro on the ceiling folds of the
Bagsværd Church.”6
For Utzon, Bagsværd Church is about
a universal celebration of light and life.
In early sketch sections, Utzon’s cloud
motif ceiling is drawn with the sensual
fluidity of Arabic calligraphy, as Utzon’s
own artistic evocation of an Islamic text
celebrating Allah as the light. It is a poetic
translation of a universally understood
metaphor for the sacred, but still
remarkable as a catalyst for the design of
a Lutheran Church. This transcultural
synthesis is indicative of Utzon’s openness,
across cultural boundaries, to the
inspiration of what he simply considered
beautiful ideas. While Utzon subtly subverted
cultural norms and stereotypes
in Bagsværd, Murcutt in Newport more
overtly confronted existing orthodoxy
and prejudices, bravely using his professional
recognition to gain acceptance for
and actually realise an architecture that
will actively counter those tendencies.
A Spectrum of Meaning
In Newport, Mohamad El Hawli, the
local president of the Newport Islamic
Society, was seeking to build a contemporary
mosque for their expanding,
predominantly Lebanese immigrant
community in the early 2000s. El Hawli
was convinced by Michael Zaar, a very
supportive non-Muslim local resident
and invited member of their building
committee, that they should engage the
then recently Pritzker-awarded Murcutt.
Murcutt had chaired the Aga Khan
Award for Islamic Architecture and was,
therefore, clearly appreciative of Islamic
culture. He agreed to the commission in
2004, but to ensure that the mosque was
rooted in respect for Islam’s cultural traditions,
Murcutt asked that a younger
architect from the Muslim community
be found. He was partnered with Hakan
Elevli, a local architect of Turkish immigrant
background, who was fully committed
to the local community’s brief, “to de-

Almost denying the sacred character of the
building, the outside walls of the church are
made of prefabricated, off-white concrete panels
inserted into a concrete skeleton.

Glenn Murcutt’s design sketches for the
Australian Islamic Centre show how the
building’s geometry and daylighting design
were conceived hand in hand.

​

“If you go and look at the Great Mosque of Cordoba, you get through into the garden, and then you get into the mosque. And so, symbolically, I am doing that, but instead of the exclusivity, this one is inclusive.”

Glenn Murcutt

sign the first true Australian mosque for non-Muslims, for new Australian Muslims – that’s inclusive – that’s going to be transparent”. Murcutt’s concept for the mosque was that a wall should extend from the street all the way around the building, giving it its strength and that, like outstretched arms, “invited the community to come out and see the mosque” and to realise, since the entire width of the entrance level is all glazed and transparent, “that it is not exclusive, but inclusive.” To further this understanding, the mosque is combined with a community centre, a library for Islamic studies, a café and restaurant that are designed to attract the wider community. For Murcutt this has been an opportunity, within a society where there is anti-Islamic sentiment, to “bring Islam back into our community” and for it to become “an addition to the culture” in a more truly multi-cultural Australia.
In Australia, Murcutt felt that a mosque did “not have to replicate the mosques of the Arab world” and should not specifically have a minaret any more, as this was archaic and redundant in this context. This met with some resistance from the older traditionalists within the community, but was embraced by the younger members who, as the coming generation, were given the final say. Murcutt was able to persuade them of the need to create an Australian mosque, just as the Ottoman, Middle Eastern and Malaysian mosques have their own character. Rather than a minaret, the surrounding wall rises at angle to greet the visitor, with a crescent moon at its apex.
Inside the mosque, Murcutt wanted a subdued quality of light that would serve to connect the architecture and people together; as evocation of the Islamic understanding of standing shoulder to shoulder. Within the great hall, men gather on the ground floor, while women are within the same volume of space and beneath similar lanterns on the quieter mezzanine floor above. The entire ceiling comprises 96 triangular lanterns, 2.8 metres high, contained within a diagonal grid of structural beams. The lanterns are painted gold on the exterior, not a colour Murcutt has ever used previously and unlikely to find appropriate again. However, having eliminated a conventional minaret and dome from his design, he wanted to make reference to Islamic culture and more directly to the gold-plated Dome of the Rock, Islamic shrine in Jerusalem. Murcutt is delighted by the resulting golden reflectivity of the lanterns, which joyously suggests paradise.
On one side, the lanterns have coloured glazing and an insect-meshed, ventilation opening. They alternately face the cardinal points of North, East, South and West, with each orientation having a particular hue and symbolic articulation. Towards the East, the glazing is yellow in the morning, representing the future or paradise to come. To the North, during the day is green which represents an oasis and thus nature. In the afternoon, from the West the colour is blood red, symbolising strength, and to the South is the blue of the sky and the sea, that is infinity.
The lanterns not only serve as a solar clock throughout the southern hemisphere day, but also reveal the time of the year. During the hot summer months, with the sun coming up in the South-East, before arcing to the North and setting in

Top: View of the Mihrāb (prayer niche) and the courtyard at the rear of the building. The large glazing at ground floor level, combined with water ponds that reflect rays of light towards the ceiling of the prayer room, constitute the most important source of daylight in the building.

the South-West; the day will begin and end with a cool blue tone. While during the cold winter, when the sun first rises low in the East and sets in the West, there will not be any blue tones, only the warmer colours of yellow, through green to red. It was from an understanding of the work of Luis Barragan, who Murcutt visited in Mexico, that he came to appreciate that colours should be orientated to the appropriate direction of the sun, in order to achieve the greatest colour saturation. Murcutt is best known for an elegantly
lightweight architecture that, like the
Aboriginal people, touches the earth
lightly, but in the Newport Mosque the
architecture is enduringly rooted in the
ground and rather it is about the light
touching the earth. Murcutt allows the
greatest intensity of daylighting in the
building to fall upon the three reflecting
ponds with water lilies and water poppies,
at the rear of the mosque, towards
Mecca in the north-west. As Murcutt
says, the beautiful flowers that open and
close with the sun, and brighter, shimmering
light will draw people, like moths,
in that direction.

Beacons of Hope
Bagsværd Church and Newport Mosque
were both labours of love that each took
over a decade to realise. With protracted
and often rancorous discussions to gain
planning permission and extremely tight
limitations on costs, the architects were
constantly being pushed to the very limits.
To bring the Bagsværd Church within
budget and having determined that his
plan solution was the very optimum,
Utzon took the radical step of having all
the drawings reduced by 10% in order to
make the necessary commensurate economic
savings. When the building was finally
complete, there was no money left
for the planned planting of birch trees
to provide the desired dappled shading
of the building, so Utzon purchased and
planted them himself. At the Newport
Mosque, Murcutt’s vision for the skylights
put enormous strain on already
limited resources, but it was decided to
go ahead nonetheless. Through personal
donations from the local and wider community,
which gained impetus from the
nationally televised documentary ‘Spirit
of Place’ by Catherine Hunter, their collective
faith has been rewarded with the
project as intended. Now the community
is very proud to have the first mosque of
modern design.
Utzon’s church not only put Bagsværd
on the international architectural map,
it also bestowed upon a quiet dormitory
suburb of Copenhagen a sense of civic
pride and own identity. It is a popular
choice for weddings for those seeking a
spiritually uplifting setting without the
overt overtones of organised religion
and for couples from differing cultural
backgrounds. In its poetic synthesis of
transcultural influences, notably including
some from the Islamic world, the
church stands steadfastly as a positive
riposte to the darker forces of prejudice
that have surfaced in Denmark in recent
years. Similarly, Murcutt’s mosque has
been embraced wholeheartedly by the
Newport community but, more significantly,
it has positively influenced the
national debate and has the potential to
change perceptions, as well as encourage
the integration of Muslim communities
throughout the world.

As Imam Abdullla Hawari said, following
the first celebration of Ramadan in

“I have a very large concrete wall that … runs horizontally right to the end of the mosque, right around the end and back again. Like big arms held out. And it’s all glass between the ‘outstretched arms’ at the entrance level. So, on entering the mosque space − like insects that are drawn to light – the end of the mosque space will be the higher light level.”

Glenn Murcutt

With its coloured triangular skylights, the building functions almost as a sundial. Depending on where the sun is located in the sky, a different colour dominates the mix of daylight that enters: blue from the south, yellow from the east, green from the north, or red from the west.

“In this way I’m using principles of light, which is incredibly important in Islamic architecture. I’m using water, which is also incredibly important. The difference is I’m changing it from a totally introverted solution to one that has much more connection with modern society in Australia, and the Islamic community is loving it.”

Glenn Murcutt

the then still not fully complete building, “you can see in the faces of the community that their dream has been realised, it is a miracle.” With great openness, the imam has said that he wants every member of the community to come there and pray to whomever they want to pray. For Glenn Murcutt, being an architect is to be “enthusiastic about light and space and how you gift that to people”. In Newport, Murcutt has gifted the local and wider community what is probably Australia’s most significant cultural building since Utzon gave Sydney the Opera House, and shown a way for society to go forward to a brighter future.

Prof. Dr. Adrian Carter is Professor of Architecture and Head of the Abedian School of Architecture at Bond University in Australia. He studied architecture at the Portsmouth School of Architecture, at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen and at the University of Cambridge. As a practising architect, he has worked together with architects Raili and Reima Pietilä (Helsinki), Niels Torp (Oslo), Ancher, Mortlock and Woolley (Sydney), as well as Henning Larsen and Dissing + Weitling (Copenhagen).
Adrian Carter has taught at the Aarhus School of Architecture and at Aalborg University in Denmark, and as a visiting academic at the University of Sydney, Portsmouth University and University of Tasmania. At Aalborg University, he served as Director of the Utzon Research Center and was responsible for the realisation of the Utzon Center building on the Aalborg harbourfront, designed in collaboration with Jørn Utzon. In 2016, Adrian Carter was awarded his PhD for his thesis ’The Utzon Paradigm’ at Aalborg University.